


Mr Sandman

by KirkyPet



Series: The Shipping Forecast [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Cheedo ships them, Dreams, F/M, Slow Burn, fantasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 16:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9910322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirkyPet/pseuds/KirkyPet
Summary: Furiosa regrets giving free rein to her imagination. Max chooses to live dangerously.Ps. Check out this video for Mr Sandman. Worst lip-sync ever, but then it was 1958https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VNUgsbKisp8





	

She’s surprised, glad. It feels like a dream to meet him alone out here, with no chaos or fighting going on around them. It seems too quiet, too calm, to be real. They’re in Buzzard territory, but she’s armed and ready. Why is he here on foot? He seems healthy enough, doesn’t look dehydrated or sunstruck.  

He nods enquiringly at her. It’s been over a month since they parted on the lift, and he looks relieved to see her looking well enough. “How’s the…?” he puts his hand to his left side by way of explanation.  

“Good, good” she replies, absently. He raises his eyebrows, disbelieving. “Well, got a bit of fever and breathing isn’t quite right yet…but I’m back on my feet and…”  

“Roaming out here alone…?” he suggests, reproachfully.  

 She smiled. “Not dead yet…thanks to you. The girls told me what you did – Max…?”  

“Owed you – for the escape. And for not letting go…” He looked her straight in the eye for the first time since the salt flats. 

 ***** 

They sit on the blistered bonnet of the Interceptor, separated by the bulk of the supercharger. They don’t talk that much, but it doesn’t feel long before the sun has dropped below the horizon. Neither of them really wants to go back, not really.   

Furiosa is increasingly restless under the new Citadel regime. She still has plenty of battles to fight, but the load is shared. She feels that, soon, she won’t be needed at all. An anachronism, a relic of Joe’s old Citadel. She knows she’s helped to make it what it is now, but it’s hard to shake off the thousands of days when she’d been a cog in the wheel of the old system. Maybe she’s just tired. Or maybe it’s the roaming blood from her father’s side of the family, long-denied.  

She knows Max is in no great hurry to be within the Citadel’s walls again. How could he be? Tortured, humiliated, robbed. She remembers the first time their eyes met. A hood ornament on the front of a pursuit vehicle, being bled to death. Can’t beat that for insult and injury. She wasn’t innocent of that – not her, Imperator Furiosa, Joe’s trusty War Rig driver. But yet, he’s here, unasked. Sitting beside her in the twilight. If they could only just stay there…  

But he sees her shivering in the desert chill and wraps her up in a salvaged blanket. “We should get moving…” he says.   

“Not yet…” she shakes her head.  

“You’ll get sick” he persists. But he sees she’s immovable. Shivering still, but eyes fixed on the stars coming out in the evening sky.   

“My mother is up there” she whispers with a smile.  

“Which one is she?” Max asks.   

“All of them.”  

 ***** 

When darkness falls, they bundle up in the back of the ramshackle Interceptor. Max gathers up as many blankets as he can find. But there’s one bundle lying by in the shadows that he passes over. It looks familiar. He looks at her regretfully.  

“Didn’t want to tell you 'til the morning. They didn’t make it.”  

She nods. It would be crazy to think Val and Maddie had survived the People Eater’s limousine. She grips his hand tightly. “Open it up. They would want them to be used.”  

So he does.  

 ***** 

They’re quite warm under the blankets. Close to feel each other’s body heat, but not quite touching. She thinks he’s asleep, his breathing is slow and deep, but it’s hard to be sure.  

Sleep is most definitely eluding Furiosa. She’s certainly warm enough. Embarrassment will do that. She remembers how she had thought of him, only last night.    

It didn’t seem wrong, despite what her mother had urged her back in the Green Place. She didn’t expect to ever see him again, truth be told. She thought he’d be long gone, without a backward glance.   

Besides, she told herself she was hardly using him if it was only in her head. It helped her to sleep. It always had done, since she had been granted the privacy of an Imperator’s room. Difference was, Max was the only man she’d ever met who…who she liked to think of in that way. And that was a big difference. Since she’d been out of the infirmary, she’d welcome sleep thinking of his lips, his hands, how he would touch her, where he would touch her. And here he was, lying next to her, his chest rising and falling. It was…unexpected.   

He turned toward her in his sleep, snuggling close, his breath warm on her ear. She lay there, heart racing, as wide awake as she’d ever been in her life. But sleep took pity on her after a while.  

***** 

Max turned his head to see her sleep, next to him. There were dried tears on her cheek from earlier, when she’d breathed deep into Valkyrie’s blanket, but she looked relaxed, comfortable. He’d never seen her like that. Always there’d been struggle, pain, ferocity. He wanted to help her, comfort her when she needed it. If she ever needed him.  

She made him feel safe, she was an anchor to keep him grounded, kept him calm. And then he realised. It was like an icy stab to the heart. He knew why he had come back, and he was afraid. Why hadn’t his ghosts warned him? If he’d realised how entangled he was, he’d have run and run. But he was glad, for all that he was sick with fear. _Because he would have run._  But he didn’t think he’d be able to, not now.   

_But it might be different this time._

It was already different. _She_ hadn’t died on the road. This woman had hunted down her monster and killed _him_. And she hadn’t needed him, not really. She had already accomplished her revenge before he’d saved her. Survival was just a bonus.  

 _It had to be different this time._  

***** 

Max and Furiosa drive up to the ramp in the shell of the Interceptor, the bike strapped to the roof. The girls were waiting, had probably been watching anxiously for Furiosa’s return.  

He unpacks the car, while Furiosa is surrounded by the girls.  

“Are you ok? How are your ribs? How did you bring him back?”  

She shrugs impatiently. “I’m fine. He went to find his car. Found some other stuff.”  

All heads turn to Max. “You went back to the canyon?” Toast demands.  

 Capable doesn’t ask. She’s like a statue. Furiosa nods at Max. He takes out a steering wheel from his bag, and a pair of charred boots. With averted eyes, he holds them out carefully towards Capable. Then he looks her straight in the eye for a few seconds. “M’sorry” he mutters.  

 She gives a jerky nod. Her face is unreadable, but she speaks clearly, no tremor in her voice. “Thank you.” She turns and walks away, head up, back straight, clutching the salvage to her chest. Dag moves to go after her, but Capable waves a hand dismissively and she re-enters the Citadel alone.  

 Furiosa looks to Max with a nod of thanks. She hesitates for a moment, then follows Capable at a distance.

***** 

“Why’d he come back?”  

“He’s obviously after some.”  

“Some what?” Cheedo asks. Dag nods significantly at the two departing women.  

“Capable…?” she asks, bewildered.  

“Tsst…no. _Furiosa_.”  

“He’ll lose his schlanger then. Furi’s killed every man who’s ever touched her.” Toast added, knowingly.  

“I doubt that…” Cheedo mused, remembering scraps of Furiosa’s fevered mutterings. They could be easily dismissed, but there had been other signs and, besides, Cheedo was a born romantic. She had her suspicions that Furiosa wouldn’t mind _at all_ if Max touched her. 

“Okay, maybe _some_ of them survived.” Toast rolled her eyes and stalked off.

“No, I mean…” she whispers something to Dag.  

 ***** 

The brief conversation had made quite an impression on Max. The girls had never been too worried about keeping their thoughts to themselves on the War Rig. So they probably didn’t care that Max had heard every word. Either that or they meant it as a warning.  

It had fitted with his impression of her as an untouchable warrior – a kind of…Diana the huntress – above any carnal human desires. Or maybe she preferred women, which was at least as likely. It had crossed his mind fleetingly that she’d maybe been a Wife like the others. She wore a scrap of the white gauze the girls had been scantily clad in. And, from the sound of him, this Joe didn’t sound like to sort to pass up the opportunity to keep a woman in subjection if he could. For all that he couldn’t imagine Furiosa as a captive, she had had a trapped, hunted expression. Not unlike his own, but with a burning purpose in the place of despair.  

And she had single-mindedly climbed across moving vehicles to rip Joe’s face off, all the while slowly suffocating to death. She had definitely had a score to settle.  

 _She’s killed every man who ever touched her._   

He couldn’t help but think that it would be worth it.  

*****  

Max was uncomfortable sleeping in the Citadel. No further than the Repair Bay anyway, where the smells of guzz and acetylene were comforting. He sat in the driver’s seat of the reclaimed Interceptor, gnawing on the food Furiosa had brought him. He’d been sorry at her parting ‘Goodnight’, but he knew he was calmer alone right then. He settled down in the seat and tried to get comfortable. She had given stern orders that the Repair Boys shouldn’t disturb him 'til morning, so there was no danger of being startled during the night. He was both relieved and charmed to see how they held her in awe and hung on every word. Although, if he was thinking clearly, he wouldn’t have expected any different. His ghosts were silent for now, had been ever since their reunion on the road. But still he couldn’t seem to get off to sleep.  

He’d shifted about so much he finally got out of the car and perched on the bonnet for a change of position. The moon was strangely bright, giving the Repair Bay an ethereal blue glow. The only exception was a halo of gold by the door where Furiosa was standing uncertainly, holding a lantern.

When she saw he’d seen her, she faltered out “I was just doing a last check round.”   

“To see I hadn’t run off?” he asked, smiling at her embarrassment. She clearly saw him as some kind of stray cat she didn’t want to scare away with too much attention.  

“I couldn’t sleep…looks like you’re having the same trouble.” She hesitated, then crossed the floor to stand nearer to him, putting the light on a bench.   

She looked over at the moonlight flooding in. Max looked up at her – face and neck half lit by a faint golden glow, the rest in blue-tinted shadow. Her now-familiar scent enveloped him, and must have intoxicated him because…  

“Furiosa…?” She looked down at him, pupils wide in the partial darkness. _“Don’t kill me…”_

Keeping his eyes on her, he spread his left palm on her thigh. She made a quick intake of breath and her arm twitched. Max shut his eyes tightly, waiting for the blow. It would be worth it. She wasn’t wearing her new prosthetic, and he thought of how they had first fought. It would almost be worth it. But he only felt her fingers bury themselves in the rough thatch of his hair. He opened his eyes again. Hers were half closed, her lips parted. _“Not you”_ she whispered hoarsely. His hand cautiously stroked her thigh, savouring her warmth. Her hand was gently kneading through his hair as he raised his right hand and pulled the shirt where it was tucked into the waistband of her trousers. Sliding it up just enough to brush his lips over the contours of her stomach, pausing at her ribs to breathe hesitatingly on the scar his knife had made. Her hand was caressing the back of his neck now, pulling him closer.   

Sighing, he moved his right hand down again to the curve of her hip. Without being held, her shirt slipped down again between his lips and her skin. Having run out of hands, he groaned silently and looked up at her again. She was breathing heavily with her half-lidded eyes. Her fingers ghosted over his face and lips, which parted in a vain attempt to catch them. Made reckless by her sudden small smile, Max shifted his hand, running it up her thigh 'til he found the warmth between her legs. _This is it,_ he thought. _She’ll surely kill me for that._ But the involuntary movement of her hips and the musky scent in his nostrils said otherwise. 

At the sharp bang of a door and clatter of approaching feet, Max woke with a gasp and a raging hard-on. The sun was casting a pink glow over the horizon and the day had begun. Regaining his breath, he rubbed hard at his face. He’d had worse dreams, he thought, with a smile and a shake of the head. _But this place will be the death of me, one way or another._   

***** 

When he saw her next at breakfast, he blushed uncomfortably at the memory. But he hoped it would pass unremarked in the warm refectory. In fact, _her_ face was unusually flushed too. He fleetingly wondered if she’d had the same dream, or something like it...

But Furiosa’s thoughts of Max had been waking ones. She’d sworn to herself that she wouldn’t think of him in that way if he ever came back. It would make things too complicated. She’d thought that, after so many thousands of days of abstinence, it wouldn’t be difficult. But she hadn’t reckoned on the effect of his presence. Sight, sound and smell were allied against her. She held out heroically but, after what felt like hours of tossing and turning, she muttered _‘Fuck it…’_   

Ten minutes later, she was fast asleep, face flushed and a small smile on her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> "...roaming blood from her father's side..."  
> If you want the backstory on this, read 'The Sacred Art of Stealing (and Leaving)' http://archiveofourown.org/works/8498173  
> There's also a mention in 'Up Around the Bend' http://archiveofourown.org/works/9700868  
> What the hell, just read the previous series. It's a 9-part so won't take long http://archiveofourown.org/series/581749  
> Likewise, "She’s killed every man who ever touched her." This is true, but isn't the reason she ripped Joe's face off. Just read the series.


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